The Dragon's Teeth

Wenceslaus the clumsy apprentice despairs of ever mastering smith-magic. His teacher, wicked Black Kaspar, mocks him, but Kaspar’s lonely young wife Kalyna breaks into a smile full of dimples whenever Wenceslaus is about.None of them know that their mountain harbours a dragon—or that the gold of its tears, overspilling to the surface, will wake a magic wild enough to destroy them all. More

Wenceslaus the clumsy apprentice despairs of ever mastering smith-magic. His teacher, wicked Black Kaspar, mocks him, but Kaspar’s lonely young wife Kalyna breaks into a smile full of dimples whenever Wenceslaus is about.None of them know that their mountain harbours a dragon—or that the gold of its tears, overspilling to surface on the mountain as raw nuggets and fragments, will wake a magic wild enough to destroy all three of them.

Sylvia Volk was born in western Canada to a family of readers; fiction followed. First she read it, and then (starting in elementary school) began making up her own. Somewhere along the way she ran out of available fiction and started reading nonfiction as well, and ended up learning about esoteric things - Arab horses, fractal structure of story, ancient-world military history, the mythology of beekeeping, the vanished kingdoms of the Himalayas and other such trivia. She writes esoteric books, and is beginning to suspect she's wrecked her eyes with too much reading.